Individual Art for Individual People

Inte/Exte by Patricia Cain (20th - 24th of November 2015)

BROTH art (www.brothart.com) launced its second solo artist exhibition this year, at the Hackney-based A-Side B-Side Gallery. Inte/Exte, by multi-award winning artist Patricia Cain, presented a series of multi-media works that explore her understanding of the relationship between the interior self and exterior elements.

Patricia Cain recently re-located from Glasgow to rural Dumfries and Galloway, a dramatic change in her environment that has seen her waver between her long-standing affinity with urban architecture and a newfound love of the remote outdoors. Encountering her new setting, Cain has become increasingly interested in the shifts she experiences in making her work between ‘interior’ abstract thought processes and a more objective understanding of the ‘exterior’. Her belief is that “the artistic self is a system that interacts with other systems, which is not independent or separate but integral”.

Cain uses a mixture of abstraction and representation to convey these different elements. On associating the interior with the abstract, she explains “The interior is a mode where visual references might be cast aside: a process that draws on the introvert: the contents within – one’s inside”. The exterior she understands to be related to the representational: “The exterior signifies an outward-looking projection: a move towards what is outside: something that involves representation or objectification, away from the inner”.

Patricia Cain is best known for her large-scale depictions of the Zaha Hadid-designed Riverside Museum in Glasgow while it was under construction. This series of work attracted many awards, including the Threadneedle Prize (2010) and the Aspect Prize (2010) paving the way for further accolades, such as the RWS award (2014) and the Arte Laguna Prize in Venice (2013).